Pulse

By GCN Staff

What will smart cities get smart about this year?

Although the global smart city movement is growing as a significant force for open data, and municipal IT innovation and investment, several key issues will influence the direction of the program this year.

Market researcher IDC Government Insights has released its smart city predictions for 2013, a list of prioritized business drivers and technology trends that will shape the local government IT landscape this year.

From the top 10 list, here are the technology trends to watch:

Smart city information challenges will begin to be framed as big data issues.

Local government will remain in the research and evaluation stage regarding machine-to-machine technologies, with growth in very specific city functions mostly for medium-size to large cities.

Cities with open data initiatives will drive 50 percent more private, citizen and crowdsourced mobile applications.

Local government will connect to citizens via mobile devices and social media, accelerating a new type of citizen/government relationship.